St Joseph’s Island: Julian Tenison Woods and the Tasmanian Sisters of St Joseph

‘There is no diocese …that wants the Sisters [of Saint Joseph] as badly as Tasmania’ wrote Fr Julian Tenison Woods to St Mary of the Cross MacKillop in 1869. Eighteen years later, in May 1887, this wish of the co-founder of the institute was realised. Five Sisters of St Joseph travelled from Bathurst in the colony of New South Wales to Tasmania and settled in Westbury where they taught the children in the Catholic parish school. St Joseph’s Island: Julian Tenison Woods and the Tasmanian Josephites; documents the history of the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph in Tasmania over the next 125 years. It follows their development as a community of religious through the social and political events that marked this period of history and charts their contribution to the education and cultural enrichment of the rural and city communities where they ministered. True to the original vision of their founders the Sisters of St Joseph brought to Tasmania the enthusiasm of the trailblazer and the dedication of the stoic and endeavoured to offer the warmth of the God’s love to those they met. This is very readable and extensively researched book gives an insight into a facet of the history of the Catholic Church in Tasmania as well as offering examples in the everyday life of the Sisters of a human courage that was reliant on trust in the Divine.